Reviews by Andrew Schultz

A lot of the Apollo 18 one-movers followed the basic formula of forcing the player to pay attention to detail to find out newer, more precise moves. Some made an actual story. COWMC doesn't quite, but its different branches certainly provide a lot of amusement. It's got a nice little percent-solved meter, and the mathier among us will see the number of ways through. Some obviously contradict each other. And plus, it starts with your car falling and manages many endings other than the obvious one. Strictly they're implausible, but so's a falling car, and it's more than fun and well-written enough.

You'll need a bit more patience reading than with What's That Blue Thing Doing Here or Leave Me Alone, which are worth playing to compare and on their own, but it definitely pays off. It allows more different actions than LMA, which is more about finding fun wrong stuff and using classical IF commands than about observation. There's more of a narrative than WTBTDH, which has some really clever meta-jokes I'm a bit jealous of.

The one thing I would add to this game would be a (Spoiler - click to show)tally of what you've looked at and maybe how you got it, or maybe even eventually hint which endings you need to re-look at(yes, one of my Apollo games needed this even more,) so you spend less time running in circles (I did, and so did ClubFloyd,) wondering if you took care of X or Y or Z. This sort of violates the strict one-move premise, but given how endings clue new endings & that's part of the game's strength, it could help the player get that last lousy point from a blind spot he may have.

That's technical, though. This is an effective and entertaining use of the one-move limitation, and I'm glad I eventually got to be part of a group that worked through it all.

Mortlake Manor is very old-school in its approach. It has a generous map, a couple of mazes, and even some randomization. But it is a bit on the plain side. There is a little too much walking and not enough reward. I'd have liked more items and fewer rooms, as I spent a good deal of the game looking at my maps and typing in commands without looking at the screen, especially once I retreated through the mazes, (Spoiler - click to show)with the 15-room nonreflexive-direction garden maze (too long!) causing particular annoyance. I tried dropping items in rooms since I didn't get the gauntlet--which probably needs a description, or a clue it can be loosened, so here's where more is less. I just wasn't expecting anything new, and when a player's staring at a chart of which room goes where, the author has lost him a bit.

It's certainly tempting, once you get the hang of text adventure programming, to start creating more rooms, since the first is the toughest--but here, we have several named "east-west corridor" and even two adjacent ones named "back door." This requires nontrivial technical skill to DO in Inform, but instead of adding to the mysterious feel of a mansion, it leaves me wondering what's so special and upset I'll have a few more rooms to walk through if I leave an item lying about. I was especially nervous about (Spoiler - click to show)the hammer, which never got used but was in the corner of my mind--and the game's map. What was it for?

Another thing that could be explored is: (Spoiler - click to show)the ghost gets you points if you study it passively. Why not have it do something, or be able to follow it?

To the author I would say--publish a second release that is not as faithful to the original as this one. Have fun and ask your testers what they'd add. Maybe you can cut down and describe the rooms more, or take advantage of some Inform-specific stuff, while keeping the original somewhere else. Describe the rooms or cut them down, or both. I have one test I like to do for a game--how does the author's by-move walkthrough look when printed out? And this game is a lot of walking around. The story's relatively sparse.

Things like the help and the (Spoiler - click to show)acronymic maze clues in two places show the author has a strong idea of making the game fair. If there's a way to clue without just leaving a few irregular verbs out there to try, then that allows for more immersion and not picking a verb vs guessing one. It helps the player avoid annoyance, but all the same, if a player is looking to avoid annoyance while playing the game, the game needs to change its tack.

I hope this is not too harsh treatment for a first-time author with the guts to put his work out there for opinions. I'm nearly certain the author can make this review obsolete with a second version. In fact, I look forward to it.

(ps - email for transcript if you want it.)

I'm not big on pointing out a bad game is very bad. Eventually, there are only so many ways to say it. So why does this game merit a review, as a 5- or 6-room maze?

I managed to map it, or I think I did, by seeing (Spoiler - click to show)if the room I went to had a description or not and undoing a whole lot. This is an interesting exercise in logical deduction--and if you like this sort of thing, it's worth doing once if only to say 'Hey, I'm better at this when the Zork I thief maze scared me and I actually had ITEMS to leave around.' It is not as potentially hair-pulling as some guess-the-verb games without walkthroughs. In theory. However, GtVs have plot and humor, and you can see what the author is thinking later, and you can pretend he really meant to X or Y.

So my practical side is satisfied that this game is just awful. But my solve-everything side noted that Googling showed you apparently CAN get to the last room and get that item. But straightforward logic doesn't seem to work. Or maybe you have to visit rooms in a certain order. So I feel half-guilty writing a review for a game like this because it may make someone else try the same thing I did.

Yet at the same time I think anyone who likes to play with fire (or the occasional bad game) doesn't deserve to suffer more than five minutes through. If there is anyone out there with a walkthrough, or who remembers, "Oh, you do this," it'd be community service to post it.

But please don't try to play the game again if you don't!

I can't give stars because if you like this sort of thing, you'll like the game (I did,) and if you don't, you won't. And I hope this review doesn't wind up looking like a beta-test for a game meant to be part of a speed competition, where these things happen & are part of the fun.

Because speedily written games don't have to be profound. If they try too hard, in fact, they'll fail. So often they are battles of quick laughs vs implementation. This game's subject is a good one--one of the worst passages in a truly terrible book I read many years ago--and it borrows from a blog post that gives a shell of a ridiculous game.

The solution is straightforward if you (Spoiler - click to show)follow the link on the game's page and it's also one of those games where you only have so many items and so many things to do, and the verbs are hinted well. The extra endings, good and bad, added to the blog post are quite funny, too.

In the first version, you can (Spoiler - click to show)just take the skateboard to make like a tree and leave before distracting Strickland, which gives a funny if not logical ending, or you can (Spoiler - click to show)reach a "win" room (irony?) if you go west with 6 points, instead of opening the door to the west to stick yourself in a no-win situation. You can also (Spoiler - click to show)set off the smoke detector without shooting the matchbook at it.

These are mistakes. I think. But then, the full solution also follows the rule of (Spoiler - click to show)making everything in the game have a purpose, so it could be the author throwing in another joke. Especially since these errors are far less grating than the awful writing the game makes fun of. But I don't want to think too hard about this. This game gave me several minutes of genuine juvenile humor which allowed it to get away with glitches. And I really like Strickland as a text adventure villain.

If the author revises, though, I demand (Spoiler - click to show)a clever rank for if you score 0 out of 8.

There's some flexibility with Speed-IF. People are given several things to put in a game and a soft time limit of three developing hours. TMV follows all the rules except the time limit, and that was the right one to break.

The reader quickly sees the game is based on A Christmas Carol, and the title gives away the plot's basic outline. Scrooge, is once again visited by three ghosts, and he needs to use what he sees to foil his evil twin's plan--people trust Scrooge TOO much now. There's all sorts of Dickensian intrigue with opium dens and dark alleys and such without directly copying Dickens, and while there's no shortage of good description--much of which makes some good puzzles clearer--the game never really textwalls the player.

And why should things be impossible? I don't think many people think A Christmas Carol suffers from being shorter or easier to read than Bleak House. The ghostly visits also provide natural breaks when that give a great idea of how far along you are, so the game is well-paced.

A bonus point: when I was part of the group that played this at Club Floyd, at several points we realized where the idea suggestions for the Penultimate Not Numbered Speed-IF would be dropped in, and it all fit in well. Not just for a few belly laughs, which is perfectly good in speed-IF, but even Doom III brought out part of the author's alternate Victorian London. This sort of thing would be terribly corny in a graphic adventure (I bet people could muck up the ghosts, too,) but with text, you don't have as many tools to overdo things.

This game stayed with me enough to write a review of it three months after playing it on ClubFloyd. While I haven't played nearly as many text adventures as I want to, I can't imagine too many stronger first efforts than this, and I can't imagine many stronger speed-IFs, either. TMV seems easy to enjoy whether or not you've read Dickens's original. So I don't know if anyone has any holiday text adventure traditions, but TMV could be a very nice one to start.

If you like cheap yucks, then this author's works are worth looking at. This may be the most complex of his works, featuring different verbs, a timing puzzle and various silly deaths you know are there but you just have to try. NGW features different verbs and actual puzzles. And it's been tested since its initial release, with a few extra jokes thrown in, with "you can't go that way" better supported.

I'm a bit confused as to why I needed to (Spoiler - click to show)enter and leave the nudist colony in order to leave the place called "win" and win, though I'm probably missing a meta-joke, and also this would've been handy to speed things up:

(Spoiler - click to show)does the player mean unlocking with the iron key: it is very likely.

It's a bit too short to give a meaningful rating to, but basically, it's good for a small lazy break when your usual time wasting games aren't cutting it. On playing games like this I feel sure I could do better, then I sit down and realize it's not so easy. I like the riff on clothes in an IF game, and that's enough for the time the player needs to invest (a few minutes.)

Yo Momma jokes were a big hit over ten years ago. Then they got old. RtF brings them back successfully. As a quest for redemption, at where you look to take down Gus, the reigning insult champion at Club Compass, by digging dirt on him. He's got three ugly secrets. Get personal, and you win. You're helped (vaguely) by Joe Mahma, a legend of the art, an in-game hint system that gives about the right amount of nudges, and the ability to move to a room by typing its name.

All this could smooth over a lot of design mistakes, but I didn't find any. The path towards the end of the game is pretty economical--everyone has one purpose, and it's pretty clear whether you need them to do something or you need to push them out of the way. They're based largely on stereotypes here--there're two bouncers, Gus's ditzy girlfriend, Vincent the bully, Gus's posse, a sleazy guy at the bar, and a nerdy guy. We all know the tropes behind these, and the player should have a good general idea what to do. There are a few Lousy Last Points as well, and those quests are fun, too. There're observations about how silly and shallow clubbing can be. You've probably seen a few, but they're fun to revisit in a new context.

In the end, I felt just a bit sorry for Gus, but I guess show business is pretty cutthroat business, especially when it directly involves who gives the best insults.

The only thing I would add is a (Spoiler - click to show)block swearing rule where Yo Momma so threatening, you're worried what she'd do if she heard you, or something--especially considering the game does a great job avoiding swearing. But that's techie talk, and I probably only thought of this because everything else is implemented. I'm glad the game got expanded from speed-if to a full work, because it was satisfying to play and a great reminder that you don't have to be serious to be clever.

Also, extra points for the author including the source with the game. I learned a lot of details from that (beyond the lists of "Yo Mama" insults--one which works, one which doesn't,) and you will, too. It's clear enough that it can double as a hint-book if the in-game hints aren't enough.

When I saw the name of this game, I was pleased it came up early in my IFComp 2011 random play list, whatever it was about. It turned out to be the sort of thing I like. The puzzles made me laugh, even when I felt they didn't quite work. Most do. And this uses some of what makes text adventures unique.

The only plot in the game is to figure how it's messing with you. There's some back-story about the house getting steamrolled to make way for a mall, but that's mostly for expedience. When faced with the actual first room description, I was immediately jolted. It works.

Another room contains a color-related puzzles with potentially dated, but likeable, puzzles, and the final one--where you have to open a door to leave--may have had opportunities for a few more items, or a more complex interaction. Describing what happens would be a spoiler, but once I learned the rules I was slightly disappointed to learn "is this it?"

These are a lot more complaints than I really voiced playing the game. My emotional reactions were "Oh, neat, you do this--or maybe you do this or that--and I see how this clue should've fit in if I were paying attention." Plot may've gotten in the way of the puzzles, here.

I have to admit, I'd be very glad to write a word-puzzle game this good. And I'm doubly impressed someone wrote it in what is not their native language--and wrote it with very few grammatical errors. I hope Ted Paladin is called into action to navigate a maze or somewhere else that's been "done already," in the future. It'll likely be done differently enough to enjoy.

Slightly above the average 3 stars here. With a hat-tip to the cover art for possibly being stairs that go up or down. It's a cool illusion and captures the ambiguity you need to resolve in the first and last puzzle rooms quite well.

I've suffered through a few Ayn Rand books. This game's better than they are, and not just because it's a lot shorter. It makes Stalin a more fun person than the people he repressed, which is rather clever, but unfortunately it stacks the deck.

Gigantomania's broken into four parts. Three require repetition and fawning to the local bureaucrat, and the fourth pretty much ignores what you try to say. It's the best one. There's always a trick to books showing people's lives are tedious without bringing the reader in, and in the case of a game, having to repeat actions to get to the next bit is just crushing.

That's the first half of the game. But then it turns toward being able to sneak around as you get more power--the (Spoiler - click to show)interrogation scene offering some wonderful, revealing ways to lose. But unfortunately anyone who has read why Communism failed will probably know this. And anyone who hasn't may wonder if all this repetition's necessary.

But the final scene is quite simply very clever. It's a chess game, and it's worth playing for that alone. I'd always interpeted "Communist style" chess as something different--the art of only allowing small advantages nobody enjoyed, more like a typical Karpov-style win where you mess up your opponents' pawns and win a tedious eighty-move rook and pawn endgame.

Here the author made the right decision. The interpretation (Spoiler - click to show)of killing all your allies to bring the enemy king near yours for the final evil laugh is wonderful and expedient. I didn't see it right away. It's the best anachronism I've seen in IF (Stalin died in '53, but the game occurred 40 years later.)

If the game could have a running side-story as clever as the last bit for each of its four parts, it would feel a lot less like Kentucky Fried Anti-Communist Tract and more like something special. I'd replay it for sure.

EGH is about a shooting during one advanced student's oral presentation for an Advanced Placement class. And I suppose that if a bunch of AP students also wrote an IF game, they'd probably have ones that get more stars and flow more coherently with this, and have more interesting branches, too. Having been in this sort of high-pressure class, it's hard to forget the concern trolls and gaslighters saying "I thought you were smart, but you couldn't even..." to various people at risk of being demoted to mere honors classes.

They'd probably be factually right, not that it makes them better people--the game manages to be badly formatted, disjointed, and crunchingly linear at the same time. You often have just one direction to move. Menu-based conversations make it hard to ask what you want, especially when the "say nothing" option refuses to vanish, and it gets troubling when you have options to be rude to friends with little cause. What seems to be the "best" one discusses (Spoiler - click to show)starting a society of people who dislike being stressed out. Though I did find the school assembly to be good, wicked, frustrated satire. Everyone in high school "knows" those are useless.

But there's too much melodrama, though--the game didn't really need a shooting to discuss the issues of emotion and connection the author really seems to want to deal with. It's all a lot like stories I remember from creative writing periodicals in college where people either drop out and work at McDonald's, write a letter for five pages before junking it, or grow up exactly as unhappy as their parents.

So EGH is about people having to get everything right to get very good grades, and if not, many people will be disappointed. But conversely, EGH got a whole lot wrong, and that's no reason to look down on the writer, who failed to separate the main character's confusion from his own. He said a lot that needed to be said, and was important for him to say. And say badly. I have no idea how much the author suspects or knows this. Hopefully in a few years he can resolve his problems and not be ashamed of what he's written and recognizing that maturing and understanding doesn't have the high stakes and time pressure of an AP class.

I didn't know what teachers were saying when they gave me a B or C and said I really had something and should keep working. I understand they were not giving the same backhanded compliments and encouragement some more competitive students did, but they had to evaluate work objectively, too.

I have to say the same to this game. I can picture the author/narrator being alternately worried he would wind up saying something too stupid or maddening or disjointed to put things together--imagining more "with-it" people holding it up as proof that person was crazy--before just typing something up a few nights before the contest.